Today I got up at wayyyy too early in the morning and drove down to the Santa Clara Convention Center because this weekend is Stitches West and I signed up to take a couple classes, the first of which started at 8:30 .
I usually don’t sign up for knitting classes because a lot of times I feel like there’s either nothing that really grabs my attention in the class list, or else the things that do seem interesting are the sorts of techniques that I could learn on my own, in a lot less time. But this year Franklin Habit was going to teach a class on tessellations (!!) and also there was a class on photographing your knits, which seemed rather appropriate considering that I now have to be photographing lace pieces for publication on a regular basis, so I signed up for both.
I got there in enough time to acquire coffee and a breakfast sandwich (mmm, coffee), and also to meet my co-editor so we could interview another designer for the newsletter, and then it was off to an all-day class on tessellations and how to work with them in designing.
I know a lot of people don’t like math, and a lot of knitters get super nervous when math is required, but one of the very big reasons why I love knitting so much is that it is entirely wrapped up in math. Every pattern is a bit like a software program, and you design by calculating out sections and percentages and working out rows and columns to create the final product. So the whole concept of tessellations, and how to put them all together, and all the math behind them, is absolutely fascinating for weird people like me. Plus we got to cut things out and put them together like puzzles, and really, it was an awesome class, and now I am just itching to sit down with my pattern charting software so I can play.
*****
Meanwhile, here is a snowflake. I should probably do some kind of spiel about angles and geometry at this point, but I am so, so tired, so ‘yay. snowflake, ugh, picots’ is all you’re going to get.
Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.
Is the tessellation knitted as one piece with different colours or as smaller pieces that are later sewn together? It was a new one to me and the images I’m looking at suggest the later, but that wouldn’t involve maths, so I suspect the former.
It could be different colors (depending on how you set it up, you could use intarsia, stranding, or else separate pieces seamed together) or you could also just do it via texture (knits vs purls).